


How Luscious Lies

by ForASecondThereWedWon



Category: Dickinson (TV)
Genre: Ambition, Discussion of Infidelity, Feminist Themes, Gen, Late Night Conversations, Post-Episode: s02e05 Forbidden Fruit a Flavor Has, Reflection, Sibling Bonding, Writing, let Lavinia have her hot girl summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:16:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28988385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForASecondThereWedWon/pseuds/ForASecondThereWedWon
Summary: Lavinia interrupts Emily's introspection for a late-night chat. Contemplating infidelity? #relatable
Kudos: 13





	How Luscious Lies

“ _Emily_ ,” a voice hissed.

Emily’s head swirled with the smoke and fumes that were the toxic effluence of her creative efforts. The spirits sought her; her talent reached for her from an intangible plane, smothering and harassing her higher senses while resuscitating her passion. The words moved within her with the very abandon of a lover. Her prostration continued.

“Let the voices come,” she murmured, eyes roving the ceiling. “I am so, so close to becoming truly lost.”

Lost in the way Mr. Olmsted had meant. Lost within the process, not separated from it as though blocked by _taxus baccata_. The poisonous hedges of her mind had been razed—paths cleared, branches stripped—and though the clouds were thick and heady, the ground was fertile. Her poems were ready to be sown and ripe to be plucked in the same instant. Clearly, this was why her fantasy of Mr. Bowles had been so real, such a convincing fever directed her brain.

“ _Emily_.”

“I’m ready,” she swore. “I have paper here in my hand.”

Her heart raced.

“Hey, Emily.”

Emily deflated. With her head hanging over the edge of the bed, she watched her sister enter the room upside-down.

“You still awake? I saw the light of your candle under the door,” Lavinia explained.

“Yes,” Emily grunted. “Why are you still up? I thought you would’ve gone to bed hours ago, since you couldn’t go to Sue’s salon.”

“Oh, um, yeah, I did go to bed…”

“Midnight snack?” Emily guessed.

“You know it,” Lavinia enthused, then sobered, stepping into the bedroom and shutting the door behind her. “I mean, no, I just wanted to hear about the party.”

Emily clambered upright to sit on the bed with her legs tucked to the side. About to answer, she paused and narrowed her eyes at her sister.

“You don’t normally sleep with your hair covered.”

Lavinia whisked the lace from the top of her head and hid it behind her back, clutched in both hands.

“Whoops, no, I still don’t,” she said. “But hey, does it make you think of a Spanish mantilla at all? Like, maybe if I got some black lace instead?”

“A mantilla?”

“Yeah, they’re totally having a moment right now. I think Jane has something to do with it. Rich widows with their dead husbands and all the black lace they want. Lucky,” Lavinia grumbled, plopping down on the edge of the bed next to Emily and smoothing her own white lace in her lap. She shrugged. “Anyway, how was Sue’s thing?”

“Not… what I was expecting. It’s left me with a lot to think about.” She offered her sister a sheepish smile.

“Like what?” Lavinia dropped her elbows to her knees and cupped her face in her hands, waiting.

Emily sighed, contemplating how much to reveal. _How no one takes me seriously as a poet_ , she considered saying. _How, even if I do succeed, many people seem likely to attribute that success to a presumed intimate attachment to Mr. Bowles_.

“Infidelity,” she found herself saying. She touched her chest, then slid her hand to her throat, testing the solidity of her recent illusion. The way her phantom editor had removed her necklace hung on her more palpably than the necklace itself had.

“Totally,” her sister gushed. “That was on my mind tonight too.”

Emily smiled at the chance of being understood.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Ship was reading _The Scarlet Letter_ and one thing just led to another and I found myself mounting… um…” Lavinia’s voice choked off and Emily frowned at her, concerned, but her sister resumed with a reassuring flutter of her hand. “I found myself mounting an analysis of the text. You know, to really get into Hester Prynne’s character.”

“That sounds… stimulating,” Emily decided. Maybe she should’ve embraced the Dickinson way and stayed in with her family tonight. True, she may have had regrets about missing her chance to be shown off as a soon-to-be-published poet, but it certainly would have made for a less complicated evening. “For something that takes two people, affairs are so one-sided. The aftermath, I mean.”

“That is so true. They always blame the woman and it’s like, nobody even mentions if she had a good time. It’s just about scorning her and shaming her and treating her like a freak just because she wanted something.”

“Exactly! Aren’t women allowed to want anything?!” Emily exclaimed.

“Not in books written by men.”

“Men don’t want to accept that love can make women interesting. It inspires us. Sometimes it’s all we have,” she finished softly, thinking of all the poems she’d had Maggie carry over to the Evergreens, all addressed to Sue, some blatantly _about_ Sue, if they found their way into the hands of an attentive reader.

“Or the not being in love,” Lavinia muttered, drawing Emily’s attention from memories full of the sound of paper squares shuffling together in a basket.

“What was that?”

“Not being in love,” her sister said. She raised her chin defiantly. “A woman might not even want to fall in love. Can’t she just have fun and see where things go? Maybe I _don’t_ wanna novels-and-chill like an old married lady. Maybe I just wanna make out a lot and not wake up with a guy in my bed taking up the space that’s reserved for my cat.”

“…Right.”

“And if the guy says he feels used, I think that’s just the misdiagnosis of a woman finally getting something out of the relationship.”

Emily nodded emphatically, boarding her sister’s train of thought at this station. She badly wanted the world to read her words and know that she was the one who had written them. She also wanted to respect Mary Bowles. And yet, with this evening’s fantasizing, Emily had realized how comfortable she was with a fictional alternative. If everyone assumed she was getting into Mr. Bowles’s paper because he had gotten into her bed, what was the harm in indulging? In her mind only, of course, though her heart still beat faster remembering her editor was spending the night at her brother’s house next door.

This might be the only way, ever. To always be someone who loved or lusted and was not taken seriously in return. She had loved Sue before Austin did and would love her all her life. How could that be disloyal? Or her fascination with Mr. Bowles, spurred on by the excitement of seeing her words printed in _The Springfield Republican_? Surely that demonstrated a fervent devotion to her craft? A desire adjacent to the accomplishment of one of her dreams? Real infidelity, Emily thought, could only be enacted against oneself. Anything else was simply… living.

Lavinia flopped onto her back.

“I don’t know how Ship can say he feels used when he literally wants to marry me so I can be his live-in servant.”

“His wife?”

“That’s what I said.”

Emily sighed for herself and her sister. She turned her head to look down at her.

“Do you wanna hear more about the salon?”

“God yes. What did Sue wear? Did anybody try to suck up to you? Were there any famous people there? Have our horrible cousins dug any massive holes around their property? If you tell me one of the guests fell into a hole and I wasn’t there to see that, I may actually die.”

Breathing deeply, Emily set aside her pages and prepared a different recitation. Slowly, she unfolded the event to her sister in words. While Lavinia listened, she sat up to take down Emily’s hair and unfasten the back of her dress. Emily had looked the part for the salon—many people had said as much—but it was just a role, a disguise, not quite an infidelity, though something that had definitely provoked her innermost uncertainties and made her feel watched in every room, at every moment.

Her sister _hmm_ ed and _aww_ ed and Emily dictated the evening. She told it almost faithfully.

**Author's Note:**

> [I'm on Tumblr!](https://forasecondtherewedwon.tumblr.com/)


End file.
